container stuff

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

On 05/26/2010 04:47 PM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
>> b) associative arrays can define c[a .. b] for a, b key types.
>> It's nontrivial but it can be done.
>
> I decided for dcollections that this only makes sense on sorted maps.

Yah, I meant sorted collections as well.

>> c) sentinel-terminated arrays (e.g. C stringz) can only define c[a
>> .. $] for an integral a.
>
> I really hope we are not considering null-terminated strings when
> deciding container functions...

I don't know. When working on an abstraction I find it very, very useful 
to anchor it in concrete incarnations that I know of. (Such an approach 
has led to taming the gnarly UTF-8 strings into nice bidirectional 
ranges.) I'm not crazy about null-terminated strings, but slists are 
also sentinel terminated, they just aren't contiguous. Comparing and 
contrasting these and other concrete instantiations is great exercise 
that only makes the abstraction better.

>> e) Any other cases?
>
> On a sorted AA, slicing using any two keys are possible (as long as
> the keys exist in the AA).

Great.


Andrei